Google – AFP, Michael Mathes (AFP), 30 October 2013
 |
Health and
Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testifies before the
House Energy
and Commerce Committee hearing about the troubled launch of
the Healthcare.gov
website October 30, 2013 in Washington, DC (AFP, Karen Bleier)
|
Henry
Waxman:Washington (United States) — President Barack Obama's health secretary
publicly apologized Wednesday for the rocky rollout of the US health care law's
new website, stressing that citizens "deserve better" from the
system.
But while
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius regretted that
navigating HealthCare.gov has been a "miserably frustrating
experience" for many, she insisted that so-called "Obamacare"
has been working well for millions of Americans.
For his
part, Obama was to travel to Massachusetts later in the day to defend his
signature reforms in the state where his former Republican presidential rival
Mitt Romney adopted a similar system in 2006.
"Today,
97 percent of Massachusetts residents have health insurance coverage and the
primary attacks against this law -? many of which we are hearing again today
about the ACA ?- never proved true," a White House official said.
 |
Health and
Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius is sworn-in at the
beginning of the
House Energy and
Commerce Committee hearing about
the troubled launch of the
Healthcare.gov
website October 30, 2013 in Washington,
DC (AFP, Karen Bleier)
|
The
pointwoman for the new health care law, however, sounded chastened about the
trouble-plagued online portal through which millions are expected to register
for health insurance.
"Let
me say directly to these Americans: You deserve better. I apologize. I'm
accountable to you for fixing these problems," Sebelius, the seniormost
administration official to testify before Congress on the health care law, told
a closely-watched House panel.
And when
Republican congresswoman Marsha Blackburn grilled her and suggested the
secretary was seeking to pawn off responsibility on contractors like Verizon,
where a breakdown took the site offline last weekend, Sebelius interrupted to
say she herself would take the heat.
"Hold
me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible," she said.
HealthCare.gov,
which allows access to exchange marketplaces where Americans can purchase
private insurance, debuted on October 1.
Committee
chairman Fred Upton said he has seen little improvement in the website's
performance since then, noting that his staff was "hit with an error
message" even as they tried to use the page early Wednesday.
"Sadly
here we are now five weeks into enrollment and the news seems to get worse by
the day," Upton said.
"After
more than three years to prepare, malfunctions have become the norm."
Sebelius's
appearance marked the third congressional hearing in a week addressing the
faulty start to Obamacare.
Critics
like Blackburn have focused on how the health care law is booting millions of
people off their plans, years after Obama told Americans that if they liked
their health plan, they could keep it.
Sebelius
countered that insurance companies routinely alter coverage in the individual
market, and that people on these plans often hold them for less than a year.
And
skeleton policies that do not measure up to Obamacare's rules, including not providing
free mammograms or charging women 50 percent more than men, will need to be
changed to conform to the law.
"If
someone is buying a brand new policy... they will have consumer protections for
the first time," Sebelius said.
With
Republicans seizing on the policy cancellations letters, Sebelius pushed back,
saying it was insurance companies altering their inadequate plans in order to
conform with Obamacare.
"This
market has always been the Wild West," she said of the individual
marketplace.
Republican
Joe Barton, a fervent opponent of the health care law, took a swipe at
Sebelius, a former Kansas governor, by suggesting she might be in over her
head.
"We're
not in Kansas anymore," Barton told her.
 |
Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius testifies before the
House Energy and Commerce Committee
hearing about the troubled launch of the
Healthcare.gov website October 30,
2013 in Washington, DC (AFP, Karen
Bleier)
|
"Some
might say we are actually in 'Wizard of Oz' land given the parallel universes
we appear to be habitating."
But
Democrats like Henry Waxman rode to Sebelius's rescue.
"I
would urge my colleagues to stop hyperventilating," he said.
"The
early glitches in this rollout will soon be forgotten... and then every
American will finally have access to affordable health insurance."
Last week
the lead contractors, which collectively have been paid hundreds of millions of
dollars to create and manage the website, said there was insufficient testing
of the online portal.
Asked
directly if the two weeks of end-to-end testing was enough, Sebelius replied
"clearly not."
"We
did not adequately do end-to-end testing," she added. "The products
were not locked and loaded into the system until the third week of
September."
As critics
pounced on the website's shortcomings, Democrat Eliot Engel noted the irony of
Republicans who abhor the premise of Obamacare yet were making a "big
show" about how many Americans can not get access to the health care
options fast enough.
"You're
really on the wrong side of history here," Engel told his Republican
colleagues.
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goldenageofgaia.com, Steve Beckow, An Hour with an Angel, September 30, 2013, with Archangel Michael
"... SB: Oh! Very good! Okay. I think I recall you mentioning Medicare in Canada. Canada has a wonderful system of universal medicare. When will the United States enjoy the same quality of medicare? Or other nations, for that matter.
AAM: You see, this is one of the fundamental rights, and your United Nations has just begun to peek at this. All of your — yes, all — of your medical systems have been based on false grids that you are eligible for disease. Many, many industries have grown up around this belief system.
Now, we would not dismantle this in a day, because the displacement would be very large, but you have already begun to see the shift to wellness, to healing centers, to alternative methods of energy healing. And with the arrival of your star brothers and sisters this will become even more so.
So not only universal medical care, but universal healthcare and the right to wellness is going to become the simple stand-alone fact over the next year to two years. Oh, and it will happen much more quickly in the United States.
SB: Oh, that’s good to hear. So many people are bankrupted by a sudden illness. And it never should be that way.
AAM: It is an atrocity that one may suffer and die because one does not have adequate money. That is absurd. ..."
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